Europe’s Great Spa Towns: 11 Historic Resorts for Taking the Waters

Europe’s classic spa towns were built around a ritual rather than a swimming pool. Guests came for weeks, saw a spa doctor and walked slowly between springs with a cup of mineral water. The colonnades, pump rooms, promenades and casinos that served this routine still stand, and in 2021 UNESCO inscribed eleven of these towns together as the Great Spa Towns of Europe.

This guide covers towns where you can still take the drinking cure and stroll a colonnade, most of them on the UNESCO list. For the great thermal bathhouses of cities such as Budapest, see our separate guide to historic thermal baths.

European spa towns at a glance

• Best for: slow breaks, architecture, park walks and treatments booked through a local spa house.
• How long: two nights per town is comfortable; traditional medical cures last two to three weeks.
• When to go: May to September for open-air concerts and full spring opening; most towns stay open all year.
• Best combinations: the three West Bohemian spas in one trip, or Baden bei Wien as a day out from Vienna.

How the spa town ritual works

The core of a stay is the drinking cure. Springs are piped into a colonnade, pump room or drinking hall, and visitors fill a cup at the taps and sip while walking. In the Czech spas the cups are small porcelain jugs with a spout in the handle. The waters taste of iron, salt or sulphur, and some are warm. Treat them as medicinal: start with a few sips, and ask a doctor before drinking regularly if you have a health condition.

Around the springs sit the rest of the routine: the Kurhaus or spa house for treatments, a landscaped park, a theatre or casino for the evening, and paths into the surrounding woods.

1. Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic

The largest and grandest of the Bohemian spas fills the narrow valley of the Teplá river, with pastel hotels stacked up the slopes. Its signature is the Vřídlo, or Hot Spring, which shoots up to around 12 metres inside a modern colonnade. The water emerges at more than 70°C.

Walk downstream to the Mill Colonnade, designed by Josef Zítek and built between 1871 and 1881, where several springs flow from taps beneath its 124 columns. The carved wooden Market Colonnade and the Park Colonnade, a cast-iron hall in the Dvořák Gardens, complete the set. The town also makes Becherovka, a herbal liqueur, and hosts an international film festival, usually in early July.

2. Mariánské Lázně, Czech Republic

Marienbad, as it was known, is younger and greener than Karlovy Vary. The town was laid out in the early 19th century as a spa in a landscaped valley, so villas and hotels look onto lawns and forested hills rather than a river gorge. Goethe stayed here in 1823, and King Edward VII was a regular guest.

The centrepiece is the cast-iron colonnade of 1889, a long, airy gallery where water from the Cross Spring and others is piped in for drinking. In front of it, the Singing Fountain, added in the 1980s, performs to recorded music at set times through the day in the warmer months.

3. Františkovy Lázně, Czech Republic

The smallest of the West Bohemian trio is the most uniform. Founded in 1793 and named after Emperor Francis, Františkovy Lázně (Franzensbad) is a compact grid of ochre and white Empire and Classicist buildings set in parkland, and the whole centre is a protected heritage reserve. It is a short hop from Cheb, near the German border.

The František Spring rises in a neoclassical pavilion of 1831, and the town is known for peat (mud) baths, which it claims to have pioneered. It is the quietest of the three.

4. Luhačovice, Czech Republic

Not on the UNESCO list, but the most distinctive spa architecture in the country. In the early 1900s the Slovak architect Dušan Jurkovič remodelled the resort in a folk Art Nouveau style, with half-timbered gables, painted timber and steep roofs drawn from Wallachian villages. The Jurkovič House in the spa park is the showpiece.

The town’s best-known spring is Vincentka, sold bottled across the Czech Republic, which you can drink in its hall at the end of the curving colonnade. The town sits in the hills of eastern Moravia.

5. Baden bei Wien, Austria

The Romans used the sulphur springs here, and the Habsburg court turned the town into a fashionable summer retreat. Around fourteen springs rise at temperatures of up to about 36°C, which gives the water its warmth and its distinctive smell. The centre is largely Biedermeier.

Beethoven spent several summers in Baden and worked on his Ninth Symphony while living in a house now open as a museum. The Kurpark climbs the hillside behind the casino, with a small temple dedicated to him near the top. For bathing, the Römertherme is the modern thermal pool complex in the centre. The Badner Bahn, a tram-train from central Vienna, makes this an easy day trip.

6. Bad Kissingen, Germany

This Franconian spa on the river Saale owes its look largely to Max Littmann, who designed the Wandelhalle, a vast cross-shaped promenade hall of 1911 where guests walk in bad weather, and the neo-Baroque Regentenbau concert hall completed in 1913. The Rakoczy and Pandur springs are served in the adjoining well hall, where attendants hand out the water at set times.

The small Kurgarten in front holds summer concerts, the Regentenbau is home to the Kissinger Sommer music festival and the town holds a Rakoczy Festival with costumed guests each July.

7. Bad Ems, Germany

Squeezed into the wooded valley of the Lahn, a short way upstream from Koblenz, Bad Ems is the most compact of the German spa towns on the list. The Baroque Kurhaus by the river holds springs in its portico, including the Kränchen, and its marble hall and casino recall the 19th century, when royal guests came for the season.

A memorial stone on the promenade recalls the Ems Dispatch of 1870, the telegram that helped trigger the Franco-Prussian War. For the best view of the town, ride the Kurwaldbahn, a short funicular with a gradient of about 78 percent, up to the woods and the Bismarck tower above.

8. Vichy, France

France’s best-known spa town in the Auvergne was transformed by Napoleon III, who came for the cure in the 1860s and set off a building boom of parks, chalets and boulevards. The heart of it is the Parc des Sources, framed by covered iron galleries roughly 700 metres long that let you walk from the spa buildings to the opera house without getting wet.

Inside the glass and iron Hall des Sources, opened in the early 1900s, several springs are served side by side. The Célestins spring, the one sold in bottles, has its own pavilion nearby, and the Opéra is a rare Art Nouveau theatre.

9. Montecatini Terme, Italy

Tuscany’s great spa town lies on the plain between Florence and Lucca. Its thermal establishments, developed from the late 18th century under the Grand Dukes, line a long park. The Tettuccio is the showpiece, a drinking hall with colonnades and pools where guests still take the waters, often with music in the background.

Behind the park, a funicular opened in 1898 climbs to Montecatini Alto, a medieval hill village with a small piazza of cafés and views across the Valdinievole. The town is on the railway, so it also works as a base for Florence and Lucca.

10. Vidago, Portugal

In Trás-os-Montes, near Chaves in the far north of Portugal, Vidago is a spa built around a single grand hotel and its park. The Vidago Palace opened in 1910, and its salmon-pink facade, pump rooms and wooded park still define the place. In a careful restoration, Álvaro Siza added a modern thermal spa painted in the same pink as the old building.

Several naturally carbonated springs rise in the park, each with a different mineral balance, and the water is still bottled. Porto is roughly 90 minutes by road, and a car is the practical way to get here.

11. Băile Herculane, Romania

A deep, forested gorge of the Cerna river in western Romania hides one of the oldest spas in Europe, used in Roman times and named after Hercules. Its 19th century centre, built when the area belonged to the Habsburg monarchy, has grand bathhouses and hotels that look like they belong in Vienna.

Much of that heritage now stands empty. The Neptune Baths of the 1880s were placed on the Europa Nostra list of Europe’s most endangered heritage sites in 2022, and volunteer architects have carried out emergency repairs. Expect faded grandeur alongside newer hotels, and good walking in the surrounding national park. View the old buildings from the street, as some are unsafe.

The famous three: Baden-Baden, Bath and Spa

• Baden-Baden, Germany: the most glamorous of the UNESCO towns, with its Kurhaus casino and the Lichtentaler Allee riverside park.
• Bath, England: the only British town on the list, best known for its Roman Baths and Georgian crescents.
• Spa, Belgium: the Ardennes town whose name is usually given as the origin of the English word spa.

Planning a spa town trip

The West Bohemian triangle is the easiest region to combine. Karlovy Vary, Mariánské Lázně and Františkovy Lázně lie within about an hour of each other, linked by regional trains and buses, and Karlovy Vary has frequent buses from Prague. Baden bei Wien, Vichy and Montecatini all have direct rail links to their nearest big cities. Vidago is far easier with a car, and so is touring the Cerna valley around Băile Herculane.

• Treatments: book ahead in summer. Medical programmes usually start with a doctor’s check; single wellness treatments are easier to arrange at short notice.
• Concerts: the park bandstands and colonnades host free or low-cost concerts mainly from May to September; check local listings.

Planning a bigger trip? See our guide to the 25 best places to visit in Europe, from city breaks to fjords.

Keep exploring

• Europe’s Great Painted Ceilings: 8 to See Outside the Vatican
• Spanish Cities You Can’t Miss: 7 Great City Breaks for Food and Fun
• Europe’s Great Art Shows: Biennales, documenta and the Big Art Fairs

Frequently asked questions

Which towns are in the Great Spa Towns of Europe?

The eleven towns inscribed by UNESCO in 2021 are Baden bei Wien, Spa, Karlovy Vary, Mariánské Lázně, Františkovy Lázně, Vichy, Bad Ems, Baden-Baden, Bad Kissingen, Montecatini Terme and Bath, spread across seven countries.

Is it safe to drink the spa water?

The public springs are monitored and safe in small amounts, but they are strongly mineralised and can have laxative or other effects. Sip rather than drink freely, and ask a spa doctor first if you take medication or have a medical condition.

Which spa town is best for a first visit?

Karlovy Vary has the most spectacular springs and colonnades and is easy to reach from Prague. For something calmer, Mariánské Lázně has the finest park setting, and Baden bei Wien is the simplest day trip from a capital city.